Limerick of the senses

I know a lady from Crewe
who likes to smell her own poo:
she can tell by the smell
whether "everything's well"
when she's eaten a curry
or two.

Ode to my laptop

O sweet laptop! O sweet and lovely laptop
That sits atop my table on kitchen cooling racks
To try to compensate for your shortcomings

The fact you overheat
because you are old and work will not replace you
until the beancounters say that you've reached ROI point
That you have peaked in your usefulness to us and a new model
can be contemplated. O laptop, my love
The new model will not be as understanding of my needs
No more putting the kettle on and making coffee
While you boot up or the browser opens
No more having a sandwich while SAP loads and purchase orders
can be released into the wild like snakes raised in captivity

But with lower productivity.

O sweet laptop! So sweet and lovely you freeze up
like the Artic and one needs a pickaxe
to make you once again responsive:
If you were trully mine I would'ave given you
a memory upgrade and a reconditioned battery
But you are - alas! - just leased processing power

So I can work from home and reach homeostasis

So I can watch my kids during the summer

- the so-called work-life balance.

Drought

The grass had gone all yellow. There my mother
watering can in hand tended to her roses
while we all sat outside, that hottest of all summers
in July 1990. My grandfather
held in his hands a copy of the Telegraph.

"When ever will this drought end" whinged my mother
conversationally, and added "it will kill all my flowers"

"Drought? Drought?" said Grandad
"What do you know about droughts?"

We felt a story coming, the war and all that, Monty
and the Eight Army and his years of service.
"A drought is when you find dead livestock
on the side of the road; When you open a tap
and it coughs up some dust with hissing sound"

"A drought is when you have to cut a reed
and suck water out of a shithole
in the dry river bed"

He went back to his paper. Mother summoned me and sent me

inside with the can: "Go and fetch some more water,

be a darling" she said. We were sitting outside.

It was such a hot summer.